The Cock Inn in Sarratt, Hertfordshire, is a pub that's just two miles from a
Tube station but could easily be 200 miles.

Take a seat at The Cock Inn and you're two miles from a Tube station; yet it could just as easily be 200 miles.

Admittedly, Chorleywood is out at the furthest end of the Metropolitan Line, but it's still hard to believe that the five-minute car journey to Sarratt has only brought you to the inner Home Counties, rather than the rustic wilds.

Step out the back door and you're in a fence-free back garden that merges into open fields and woods. Step out the front door and you're in a Hertfordshire village graveyard (literally, if you don't look both ways for traffic).

Inside, low ceilings are the order of the day (Duck or Grouse, say the signs over the doorposts), while traditional English main courses (lamb chop, steak and ale pie, plus the odd curry) are the dishes of the day. With matching surroundings, too: the main dining room is an ancient, pointy-roofed rural barn, with a forest of overhanging beams and dangling artefacts.

The welcome from the staff is distinctly out-of-town too: much brighter and less dreary than the average urban grunt of greeting. But there's nothing country-bumpkin about the service; as befits a place which in summer is catering for customers up to 100 yards from the kitchen, the girls behind the bar can tell at the touch of a coloured till button how many haddock or scampi portions are left in the chef's locker.

As for the ale, there are four different varieties: First Gold and Tangle Foot from Badger, Sussex Draught from King & Barnes and the tastiest and strongest of them all, Fursty Ferret (4.4% ABV and featuring hops, nuts and the faint echo of orange peel), also from Badger.

Work your way through them all and you won't want to go back to the big city.